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Reviewed by estebangonzalez104 / 10

Not a clever adaptation of Shakespeare's Cymbeline

"On her left breast, a mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I'
the bottom of a cowslip."

It's been over 14 years since Director Michael Almereyda and Ethan
Hawke collaborated together in the modern day adaptation of William
Shakespeare's classical play, Hamlet. The film was warmly received by
critics despite not being the first time that a Shakespeare play was
adapted to modern times without changing the original dialogue (Baz
Luhrmann did the same with Romeo + Juliet in 1996). Once again
Almereyda decides to leave the dialogue untouched and change the
setting to modern times for the adaptation of Cymbeline. The King (Ed
Harris) of a biker gangster group known as Britain is upset that his
daughter, Imogen (Dakota Johnson) has fallen in love with his protégé,
Posthumous (Penn Badgley), who she secretly married. The two have sworn
eternal love to each other, but the King's second wife, the Queen
(Milla Jovovich), has other plans for Imogen. She wants her to marry
his son, Cloten (Anton Yeltsin) so they banish Posthumous from their
group. Meanwhile the bikers have decided to stop paying tribute to the
Roman Police Department and a war is about to breakout between the two
groups. Posthumous has fled to his friend's house where he ends up
meeting Iachimo (Ethan Hawke) and tells him all about his lover's
chastity. Iachimo makes a bet with him claiming that he can seduce her
and prove that she's not as pure as he believes her to be. He meets
Imogen and is unsuccessful in his approach, but Iachimo fools
Posthumous into thinking he did sleep with his lover and that is where
the plot begins to take several unexpected twists.

If the short synopsis of this film felt a bit convoluted, it's because
the film actually has a lot going on in the opening minutes where it's
trying to introduce the main characters in a very rushed way. The
dialogue doesn't help either if you're not familiar with Shakespeare's
play because the delivery is extremely fast and new characters keep on
coming from all over the place. It's strange that I'm complaining about
how fast everything comes at you, because the pacing does get quite
tedious and I was thankful the film only runs a bit past the 95 minute
mark. But that doesn't mean that the adaptation isn't a mess because
it's all over the place. One of the reasons why this adaptation didn't
work for me is that the tragicomedy plays out as pure tragedy here and
the comedy element is missing from the film. There was no time to get
to know any of the characters or their true intentions and it seemed
the entire purpose of this film was being able to adapt the play in a
modern setting without touching the dialogue. Something that Whedon
accomplished much better in Much Ado About Nothing because he focused
on the comedy more than on the action. It's funny that I say this
because I wasn't even a fan of Whedon's adaptation although I
recognized its artistic value, but here there's nothing that worked for
me.

Shakespeare's plays might be timeless, but that doesn't mean that all
of them can be adapted to film. Cymbeline seems to be one of those
plays that don't translate well to the big screen due to the convoluted
plot. The performances in this film aren't bad, and I like most of the
actors here, but the problem for me was that the adaptation didn't work
at all. Not even John Leguizamo can redeem the film despite how well
he's played Shakespearean characters in the past (Romeo + Juliet). Ed
Harris and Ethan Hawke are both extremely talented actors, but there
was nothing they could do to engage me with the film. I love
Shakespeare's plays and despite never having read this one, I still
could see some of his trademarks in the characters and writing, but
unfortunately I didn't care for them in this adaptation.

http://estebueno10.blogspot.com/

Reviewed by Moammar Gaddafi1 / 10

Vapid pretentious tripe

Playing Shakespeare with various NY accents is like playing Moliere
with "Allo Allo" accents. It's just crap. The original Shakespeare,
performed at the Globe in London, is a lot like Irish English. It is
nothing like the squawky dialects of the colonies. Words like "Thou
took'st a beggar; wouldst have made my throne a seat for baseness"
sound credible in either the original Early Modern English or in
standard Oxford English but in Bronxese, Jerseyese, or Manhattenese
they sound simply like ludicrous crap.

If that weren't enough the whole production with its pretentious,
foreboding, ponderous atmosphere utterly lacks continuity and energy.
It's just a sequence of meaningless lines uttered in incongruous
settings by talented people whose desperate attempts to breathe life
into this corpse of a movie are more cringeworthy than praiseworthy.
Talent ceases to be talent when expended so pointlessly.

Reviewed by madbeast2 / 10

Reductive

Michael Almereyda once again stuffs a Shakespearean play into modern
day society and comes up with an incomprehensible mess. His film of
"Hamlet" at least used as its framework an enduring masterpiece with
themes as relevant to today's world as when it was written. But
"Cymbeline" is an obscure, rarely produced oddity from Shakespeare's
canon which employs unlikely plotting centered on obsolete sexual
morality which has no relevance to today's world. Why Almereyda thought
this archaic chestnut needed to be set in the present day is baffling.

It is up to the actors to inject some life into this dull mess and for
the most part, they are not up to the task. Dakota Johnson is stunning
to look at as the ill-used Imogen, but gives a one-note performance
that is insufferable to watch. Ethan Hawke brings to the evil Iachimo
the same dull monotone that he employed as Almereyda's Hamlet. And Penn
Badgley makes the gullible Posthumus seem like a refugee from a boy
band. Only Delroy Lindo and Ed Harris project the charisma necessary to
make their characters interesting, although demoting Harris' Cymbeline
from the King of Britain in the original text to the head of a
motorcycle gang is unimaginably reductive.

Almereyda seems to have a fetish for updating Shakespearean drama into
the modern world and has no issue with pummeling it into a different
shape to fit his concept no matter what the Bard's original intention
was while writing it. The approach worked intermittently with "Hamlet"
but fails completely with "Cymbeline." Almereyda would be well advised
to seek out contemporary stories to make films of and leave Shakespeare
alone.